Rise of an Imperial Sniper
by Hibbidyhai
Summary: When an anti-Imperial terrorist attacks the Senate building and takes a Senator and an Imperial Intelligence operative hostage, a young security officer joins the response team dispatched to deal with the threat. Features Cereen Faye, whose story continues (in chapter 4) of Agents of Imperial Intelligence. Set between Star Wars Episode 3 and 4.
1. Part One

Agents of Imperial Intelligence: One Shot

Rise of an Imperial Sniper

Part One

(Author's Note: This story features Cereen Faye who is introduced in chapter four of Agents of Imperial Intelligence.)

The late afternoon sun shone down through the thin atmosphere of Imperial Center onto the enormous Imperial Senate building, its orange light reflecting off the metallic surface and giving the mushroom shaped building a molten appearance. It was after hours for the Senate, and much of building was empty, except for stormtrooper security personnel and a few late workers.

Deep inside the building, in an office suite devoted to the senator from the heavily populated inner rim world of Denon, a covert meeting was taking place.

Inside his office, but seated on a comfortable divan rather than behind his large desk, Imperial Senator Hiron sipped a hot cup of stimcaf. He had been awake since extremely early the previous morning, working on a military authorization bill to increase funding for the sector fleet defending Denon. It was a non-controversial measure, however he was constantly fighting for funding with the delegation from Eraidu, who had strong backing from Grand Moff Tarkin, Eraidu's most famous native son.

For the life of him Hiron didn't understand why there was no room in the budget. The end of the Clone Wars years prior had not corresponded to a decrease in military funding, yet it was as if there were some huge secret project siphoning funds that should have been available. He knew the Emperor had a number of pet projects, and cared very little for budgetary constraints, but someone had to worry about the numbers. Unfortunately for him, the leadership on Denon didn't care how he got them their funds, just that he did it.

Across from him, on the other side of his caf table, sat Operative Alanna, an Imperial Intelligence Agent. Hiron did not have a huge number of contacts with the Empire's intelligence agencies, but he had instructed his aides to reach out the intelligence community. He hoped to find a good security risk that would justify the increase in funding he sought, and preferred Imperial Intelligence to the more...politically sensitive...Imperial Security Bureau.

"...there a number of migratory species near the sector with large fleets, by civilian terms. They aren't heavily armed, but urban myth likens them to pirates and raiders," Alanna was saying.

Senator Hiron was only half listening to her, his mind already moving on to his next idea. He was about to interject when he heard an odd sound coming from the corridor outside of his office suite. If he had come from a less privileged family, or had seen more action holos, he would have recognized the sound of blaster fire.

"Good lord, what is that ruckus?" Hiron sighed, standing as if he was about to tell off some particularly noisy neighbors.

He made for the door but was stopped by Alanna, who grabbed his hand. "Senator, that's blaster fire," she said, her eyes wide.

"Blaster fire? Here?" he said. "That's impossible, I assure you."

Alanna walked over to the panel of decorative transparisteel next to the entrance to the suite, attempting to see out through the panel's frosted exterior.

Suddenly the cacophony grew much louder, and the sound of small explosions was joined by the shouting of stormtroopers.

"Senator, take cover," Alanna shouted, waving Hiron back, who was making for the door again. She wished she had her side-arm, a small blastech hold-out blaster, but the security at the senate building had confiscated it.

She jumped backwards when she saw movement coming from the main stairwell down the hall. She grabbed Hiron by the shirt, shoving him behind his divan. The sound of blaster bolts smacking against the walls outside of the office became deafening. A shot struck the transparisteel panel, shattering it into a million pieces and scattering razor sharp superheated shards throughout the room.

A man, blood streaming down his forehead, jumped through the broken window. He was tall and lean, with long black hair that clung to his face. The blood on his face contrasted starkly with his pale white skin. He held a heavy blaster pistol in one hand and a datapad in the other. The man, not realizing that he had company inside the office suite, pressed himself against the wall as blaster fire tore apart the ornate wooden door that separated the office from the hall.

He pointed his blaster out the window and returned fire. "Come and get me!" he shouted.

"Good lord man! What are you doing?" Senator Hiron yelled from behind the divan, his face a mixture of rage and shock. Alanna gave the Senator a swift kick to the ribs but was too late in preventing the idiot from giving them away.

She jumped up from her hiding spot and put her hands in the air as the man pointed his blaster pistol at them.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice betraying a sinister intent.

"Nobody," Alanna answered back calmly.

"I'm the Senator from Denon, and I demand to know what're you doing. What is the manner of this...this...uncouth behavior?" Hiron shouted.

"A Senator huh?" the man responded, moving his blaster over to Alanna. "And who're you? His secretary?" he asked.

"Something like that," she answered back angrily.

"Get over here," the man demanded, waving the hand that held a datapad.

Hiron hugged the wall, in order to avoid taking fire, and stepped over to the man. The Senator was grabbed once more by the shirt.

"Hey, I've got hostages," he shouted out into the hall.

There was a pause in the blaster fire entering the room.

"Elex Path, you've got nowhere to run," a stormtrooper shouted in response, his voice muffled by his helmet. "Come out now with your hands up!"

"I've got hostages," Elex repeated. "Call out to them," he said to Hiron, whom he still had by the shirt. He kept his blaster pointed at Alanna, keeping her at a distance.

"Uh, this is Senator Hiron, Imperial Representative from Denon. Cease your fire, you're ruining my interior!"

Senator Hiron's proclamation was met with more blaster fire. A grenade flew through the broken window, ricocheting against the wall and landing at Alanna's feet. She instantly grabbed it from the floor, chucking back out the window.

An explosion erupted from the hall, followed with the death cries of half a dozen stormtroopers.

"A grenade, good heavens, don't they know who I am?" Senator Hiron frowned.

Elex peered out of the window, confirming the death of the troopers and his relative short term safety. "Nice one," he said, glancing at Alanna and really looking her over for the first time.

Alanna was wearing civilian clothes, albeit formal business wear, with no indication of her military origin. Her brown hair had been put up in a bun but some of her hair had fallen out of place in the commotion.

"Right, both you, out," Elex commanded, pointing his blaster at Alanna. He gave Hiron a shove towards the door.

"You aren't going to get away with this," Alanna told him.

"We'll see pateesa," Elex said with a smile. "Out." Alanna followed the Senator out into the corridor.

Outside was the wreckage of the hall, with bits of stormtrooper here and there. The wall of the office on the other side of the corridor had completely imploded after the grenade had exploded.

Elex steered his hostages down the corridor and towards the stair well. He paused at the corner, glancing up the stairs to make sure there weren't more stormtroopers waiting to mow him down in a barrage of blaster fire.

"Go down," Elex ordered, pushing Hiron down the stairs. The Senator stumbled but recovered. Alanna followed reluctantly.

They went down the stairs for several flights, until they arrived on a landing that led to an open air speeder parking facility. There were several small speeders, including Hiron's very own personal speeder, a luxurious green SoroSuub model.

But Elex steered them towards the far end of the landing pad towards a grey winged air speeder with an enclosed canopy. They were halfway across the pad when the shouts of stormtroopers could be heard behind them.

"Go, go!" Elex shouted, aiming his blaster behind him as he ran. He fired off a couple of wild shots, which succeeded in getting the stormtroopers to duck for cover rather than shoot them down.

Senator Hiron collapsed against the side of the speeder, out of breath, while Alanna ducked behind one of the wings.

"I don't want to sound disloyal, but the troopers don't seem too concerned about our safety," Hiron said to Alanna.

"They think we're expendable," Alanna answered his comment.

"I'm a Senator!" Hiron retorted, affronted.

"Like I said…" Alanna restated.

"Inside the speeder," Elex shouted, punching a number sequence into his datapad and unlocking the canopy door.

Alanna grabbed the Senator and pushed him through the door against his protestations, ducking down to avoid being hit by blaster fire.

Elex shoved the door shut and ran around to the other side of the speeder, firing at the stormtroopers and keeping them at bay. He opened the pilot's canopy and jumped in.

After a few moments, as blaster fire splashed against the hull, they were airborne. The twin repulsor engines screamed to life and Elex steered the speeder away from the Senate building and into the crowded skylanes of Imperial City.

oOoOo

Cereen Faye stared into the holographic mirror. The face staring back at her had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a narrow nose. Slight freckles marked each cheekbone. She tried to remember her mother's face, whom she was constantly compared to by friends of her family. She tried not to think about when she had last seen her mother. The Clone Wars, which had seemed so distant to the child she had once been, had taken her mother. Near the end of the war the Separatists did the impossible, besieging the capital of the entire galaxy. Debris from the battle had struck their monad, instantly killing her mother. Cereen would have died as well, if she had not been at primary school at the time.

Was this what her mother had looked like? The memory of her mother's face had faded, despite how tightly she had clung to it. All of their family holos had been lost in the apartment, and her father hadn't been able to recover anything from the wreckage.

Turning away from the mirror, Cereen grabbed a towel from the bench inside the locker room, wrapping it around her waist. She went to her locker, removing her Imperial City Security uniform. She removed the towel and stretched before getting dressed. She had just finished her afternoon jog and was preparing for the night shift at the security annex building, inside the Hirkenglade Prefecture.

She exited the locker room and entered the common lounge beyond, where a few of her male colleagues sat playing pazaak and eating dried fungus crackers, a snack food that actually tasted much better than it sounded. She was aware of their wandering eyes as she walked past, but payed them no mind. Men had watched her like that, even if they hadn't meant anything offensive by it, ever since she was a teenager. But after she had learned over half a dozen ways of taking a grown humanoid off of their feet during her combat training, she didn't stress about it. If any men ever got grabby she knew how to twist their elbows behind their heads until things that shouldn't pop popped.

She arrived at her destination, a communications control room, where her shift was about to begin.

Cereen exchanged places with another security officer and logged into the computer terminal. She placed a headset onto her forehead and glanced up at the holoscreen showing the afternoon news. Nothing important was happening.

She heard the door open behind her and recognized the loud footsteps of her boss, Domin Kar, the Precinct Chief of her security division.

"Cereen, you're early," he said, placing a cup of caf on the top of the terminal next to hers.

"I'm on time, boss," she shook her head.

"Anything yet?" he asked.

She shook her head again. The security grid was screened by droid intelligences located within the Precinct City Hall. Imperial Center, the planet that had once been called Coruscant, was so big that each of its quadrants were big enough, and populated enough, to function as cities unto themselves. Hirkenglade, which was just a few dozen kilometers from the Imperial Palace District, was home to tens of millions of individuals. It was considered a middle class district, although it had the societal stratification common to Imperial Center, with the wealthy living up in the high rises and the poorer rungs of society living in their literal shadow below. Hirkenglade was almost all residential towers, although it had all of the services common to all districts, including restaurants, schools, theaters, and entertainment corridors. Enormous self contained greenhouses were housed inside the enormous city blocks, helping to grow the enormous food supply the city needed.

The control center inside the annex building functioned as a switchboard. Citizens in distress would first be answered by droid intelligences, who would then direct their calls to the appropriate authority based on the severity of their trouble. Cereen would only end up speaking to a live being if things really were bad.

She switched the holo screen overhead onto an entertainment channel, and began to watch a holodrama featuring the child star Garik Loran. Her boss began playing pazaak on his datapad.

Cereen was a rookie, only in her first year of service with Imperial City Security. Her duties varied, and, despite her colleagues' predisposition against females, an all too common New Order belief, she had earned her place. Currently she was on office duty, for the past week and including the next one, but she also frequently performed patrol duty. She hoped to become a detective one day.

A noise from her boss's terminal yanked her attention away from the holodrama. She expected it to be another complaint about under dwellers intruding on the more well to do concourses, but realized from Domin's expression it was more serious.

"Right, got it," Domin said into his headset. "Yeah, I'll get them together." Domin stood from his seat and ripped off his headset.

"What is it boss?" Cereen asked.

"Armed hostage situation, over in the docks area," he said, referring to the shipping facility at the edge of the district that moved and stored large amounts of goods from offworld and other districts across the city. "A code red, v.i.p hostage situation," he added as he turned to leave the room, grabbing his comlink.

"Wait, hostage situation?" Cereen started, ripping off her own headset. "You're summoning the response teams?"

"That's right," he answered, leaving the room. Cereen followed him out.

"What're you doing?" he asked her.

"I'm on the response team," she reminded him.

"Stay at your post, officer," he shook his head. He spoke into his comlink, informing a lieutenant get the on duty officers ready for armed response.

"Boss," Cereen followed up stubbornly. "I'm on the response team."

"You're on comm duty tonight," he yelled at her, growing angry.

"The calls will get transferred," she answered back. "Or put someone off-duty in there. I've trained and been qualified for armed response, I'm the best sniper in the precinct. I need to be on this."

Clearly growing frustrated at her stubbornness and needing to make sure the team was getting assembled, Domin gave in.

"Fine, go get your gear. Get someone to take your place," he ordered.

Cereen went back into the communications room and grabbed her headset, and then went back into the lounge. She spotted a fellow officer whom she disliked, who was currently bragging about his new girlfriend to a couple of other younger officers, and tossed the headset into his lap.

"You're on, champio," she said, using the Huttese slang word.

"What?" he exclaimed. "I'm off duty."

"Not anymore. Emergency," Cereen shook her head. "Chief's orders."

She turned and ran down the hall and into a nearby turbolift. She took it down a couple of levels until she arrived on their armory level. She exited the lift and walked quickly down the hall and into the armory locker room. She scanned her eye into a biometric security panel, which accepted her and opened the reinforced blast door.

On the other side of the door a dozen men were getting ready, putting on blue security armor that was similar to that of a stormtrooper, except that the helmet was not a full face design.

She went to her locker, shedding her dress shirt and pants. The men in the room didn't give her a spare look, as they were busy donning their own gear. She found it a refreshing change for once.

She put on the form fitting body suit and then the chest plate, followed by her gloves. Despite her late start she was almost done by the time the other officers were getting ready to leave the room. With her armor on she retrieved a padded case from within her locker.

"Ready?" she heard the squad leader ask everyone in the room. She joined the chorus of affirmatives only a little late, just as she shouldered the case and turned away from her locker.

Cereen followed behind the others as they exited the locker room through the back hall, which led directly to the annex building's speeder hangar. A number of armored speeders lay within, many of them based on the atmospheric transports from the Clone Wars era.

Her response team joined a couple of others gathered in the hangar. They waited only a few minutes until a senior officer, joined by her boss, Domin Kar, briefed them. A terrorist had attempted to bomb the Imperial Senate building. Although his plot had been thwarted by security personnel he had escaped with a pair of hostages, a Senator and an unidentified aide.

The terrorist, identified as Elex Path, was an anti-Imperial extremist who felt the Empire was a fascist organization, and the Senate a corrupt vestige supporting an illegal government. He had been pursued by T.I.E fighters from the Senate complex through the skylanes, forced to weave between the skyscrapers and city blocks to avoid being blown apart. He had landed inside a shipping facility at the edge of the precinct, and their orders were to secure the surrounding area while Imperial Security forces stormed the building.

Their briefing concluded, Cereen's team filed into one of the transports. She was the only one not carrying the standard blaster carbine rifle.

The flight to the edge of the district only took a few minutes, during which their superiors filled them in on the details of the operation through the comlinks inside their helmets. Their squad would take to the rooftop of a nearby high rise and provide overwatch, while the other squads would secure the walkways that connected the warehouse building to its neighbors below.

They landed on top of the building and her squad disembarked. They spread out, with two officers securing the lift that lead to the interior of the building.

"Officer Faye," Cereen heard over her headset. "Take the northwest corner of the building. The perpetrator is on the floor below the docks. They parked in an access tunnel."

Cereen hurried over to the corner the lieutenant identified and glanced over at the building. She spotted the docks. Below them were a series walkways and automated machinery, currently deactivated. The access tunnel was a round conduit that allowed maintenance droids and inspection speeders access to the interior of the building, which would probably be mostly empty space filled with shipping containers.

"I see it," Cereen responded. She shifted her case off of her shoulders and placed it on the rooftop. She knelt down and opened it.

Inside was one of her most precious possessions. Usually officers were restricted to standard issue weapons, but a few well placed references from former instructors in her Sub-Adult Group academy, and the reputation of her retired father, had persuaded her superiors.

The SoroSuub X-45 sniper rifle had belonged to her father, who had served in Coruscant Security back in the days of the Republic. He had used it during the battle of Coruscant, when Separatist armies had landed on the surface and attacked the city. It had a thin grey plasteel stock with soft black grips along the bottom. The scope ran the length of the barrel, and had been upgraded to a holographic sight that could be adjust to display infrared or ultraviolet targeting data. Her father had made further adjustments, removing the automatic fire mode and switching from the standard magazine that carried 25 shots to a higher energy receiver that fired more power bolts, with a 10 shot capacity.

The powerful rifle was actually illegal for her to carry although there was a civilian version of the rifle available, which was favored in big game hunting across the galaxy and in shooting competitions. Her status as security officer allowed her to own it, and outside of her Precinct Annex building, she could only carry it inside its case, without ammunition. Of course, it was too valuable and fragile for her to want to carry it about in the first place.

She removed her stand from the case and place it on the edge of the roof, and then laid down on the rooftop on her belly. She placed her rifle onto its stand and began to examine the warehouse building through her scope.

Night was beginning to fall. She heard the distant howl of inbound military transports, which confirmed the arrival of the stormtrooper response team.


	2. Part Two

Agents of Imperial Intelligence: One Shot

Rise of an Imperial Sniper

Part Two

Elex swerved the air speeder around the corner of a high rise, tipping the vehicle until it stood sideways over the wings. He could hear muffled cries as his passengers took the worst of the turbulence.

His escape from the Senate building had not gone as planned. He had meant to plant a bomb underneath an energy processor beneath the Senate chamber. The resulting explosion would have knocked out communications, albeit temporarily, allowing him to escape. But without the explosion they had tracked his vehicle through the crowded skylanes until a pair of tie fighters arrived and attempted to blow him out of the sky.

He knew the Imperials cared very little for the value of life, but he had expected them to be a little more careful considering his hostage. He had been wrong. Not only had the Imperials kept trying to shoot him down, they had fired indiscriminately into the buildings and crowded streets. He tried not to feel guilty about the collateral damage. After all, every bit of excessive force would only turn more people against the Empire.

He regretted leading the tie's right back to his staging area, but he had no other choice. He only hoped his allies would forgive him.

Elex hugged the side of the building, keeping the wall of the skyscraper only a meter from the tips of his wings.

Up ahead was a shipping transfer building, consisting of a docking area for large freighters, a warehouse, and utility levels. There was an overhang towards the midsection of the building, above where it met the surrounding "ground" floor of the residential monad which provided him cover if the tie's flew overhead. He flew under the overhang and spotted his entrance, a service conduit tunnel. He reduced his speed and entered the tunnel and then shut down the main engines, letting the passive repulsors settle the craft onto the floor of the tunnel.

As soon as he let his speeder land he popped open his canopy and jumped out of the cockpit. He grabbed his blaster from the floorboard and pointed it at his two hostages. They dutifully exited the speeder, with their hands up.

"Alright walk down the tunnel, slowly," Elex ordered. He noticed the difference between how the Senator and his aide were behaving. Whereas the Senator seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown at all times, she was calm. He didn't like the way she looked at him with her brown shifty eyes, as if she was waiting for him to let down his guard.

He led them around a bend in the tunnel until they arrived at an access hatch. He knocked on the door with the butt of his blaster four times. There came a voice, from a hidden security camera, above the hatch.

"Elex, what in the karking hells are you doing?" The voice had an offworld accent that the Senator and Alanna couldn't place immediately.

"Plan failed, Lorda. Bomb didn't go off. I grabbed these two but the kriffing Imperials wouldn't back off," Elex explained.

"Why did you lead them back here?" the voice shouted.

"Where else was I supposed to go?" Elex answered.

There were a few moments of silence before the door opened with a hiss. Elex pushed his hostages inside.

They found themselves inside the control room of an enormous warehouse. Three humanoids, including a rodian and a gotal, were seated at inactive control terminals. A holoscreen was playing the evening news, which was showing footage from the chase through the skylanes.

"Look like they almost blasted you Elex," the gotal laughed.

"Who're they?" the rodian demanded. Alanna recognized that his voice had been the one to greet them on the other side of the door.

"I am Imperial Senator Hiron of Denon, and I must protest this treatment," Hiron answered.

"Right. Tie him up. And who are you, schutta?"

"Alanna," she answered simply.

"It doesn't matter," Elex shook his head. "The Imperials are no doubt on their way. And they haven't shown much regard for their lives." The gotal and a human grabbed Alanna and led her over to some piping that was against the wall. They tied her up next to the Senator with some elastic rope. With the press of a button an electrical charge went through the material, shrinking it exponentially. "Is the getaway ready?"

The rodian nodded out towards the warehouse floor. There, between rows of stacked shipping containers and shrouded in darkness, sat a light transport with garish graffiti in huttese painted on the side.

oOoOo

Cereen switched her scope to infrared. She had already spotted the speeder that the terrorist had parked inside the service conduit. With the infrared targeting data she could see through some of the transparisteel windows on the paneled the side of the warehouse. The panels had been painted over with black acrylic, but she could vaguely see through them in infrared.

There were rows of bright spots along the ceiling of the warehouse, which she guessed where lights that had retained a little bit of heat, even though they were shut off. There were also rows of shipping containers, which appeared to fuzzy blacked out bars inside her scope. She thought she saw the outlines of a ship, although it was hard to say for sure. It could possibly be some sort of large industrial droid. The rest she couldn't make out through the walls of the building.

"Squads Delta c through e, taking position," she heard through her comlink. The stormtroopers had arrived just moments ago and taken charge of the operation. They patched through their communications into her helmet comlink, even though she was City Security, in order avoid any mishaps and keep everyone on the same page.

She moved her scope down the building to the walkways that joined the back of the building with the residential monad. A squad of her colleagues from the Precinct were crouched on either side of the walk bridge. Two squads of stormtroopers were proceeding across the bridge, their blasters held up in firing position.

She scanned the side of the building the stormtroopers were approaching, but there were no windows for her to see through. The stormtroopers made it across the bridge and gathered on either side of a blast door, placing detonation charges onto its locking mechanism. There was a loud thump followed by a metallic screech as the charges exploded, melting the locking mechanism into slag. A stormtrooper equipped with a pneumatic vice inserted his device into the door jamb and forced it open. The two squads entered the building.

"All clear," Cereen heard over her headset. She moved her scope back to the windows. She still couldn't see any activity. But that didn't mean there wasn't any.

"Moving up the main stairwell," she heard. Suddenly the muffled sound of blaster fire could be heard, even as far up as Cereen's position on the neighboring rooftop.

"Taking fire!" she heard the troopers call out. "Two unidentified gunmen. Not the suspects."

"He probably has friends," Cereen said to herself.

"One enemy down. We're on the main level." Now the red and green flashes of the firefight showed up on Cereen's scope. She could see the reflected light coming through some diagonal skylights near the roof of the building.

Frustrated there was nothing to shoot at, she pointed her rifle at the enemy speeder. She pinpointed an air intake and fired a single shot. The bolt struck perfectly, causing the intake to burst into flames. Moments later the repulsor engines exploded, showering the access tunnel with shards of molten durasteel.

oOoOo

Elex's boss had sent the gotal and the human down to the main level to hold off the Imperials. The sounds of the firefight were getting closer. The rodian was furiously adjusting controls on a computer terminal in front of the window that looked out into the interior of the warehouse. Outside a series of lights went on and a warning klaxon began to sound. Off in the distance the huge hangar doors that separated the warehouse from the docking hangar beyond were thundering open.

"What are they doing?" Senator Hiron asked Alanna. "They can't hope to get away in that thing. They'll be blown out of the sky."  
Alanna stared at their kidnappers a moment before responding. "I think they're trying to pull a vibrosword fish."

"A what?" Hiron asked.

"A deception. The ship is a diversion," she explained.

"You are way too smart, you know that," Elex shouted back at her. Elex moved over and crouched down in front of her, placing the barrel of his blaster against her cheek. "What kind of secretary are you anyway?"

"The smart kind," she yelled back. She kicked out, catching Elex by surprise. Her foot slammed into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs. He staggered backwards, raising his blaster.

"Leave them!" the rodian yelled. "Let's go." He made for the service tunnel just as an explosion rocked the conduit. The sound was deafening and shards of superheated metal rained down upon him. He stumbled backwards into the control room, his hands furiously swiping at his jumpsuit as chunks of metal burned through the material.

He went on a long tirade in huttesse that even Elex didn't completely understand.

Outside, in the warehouse, the engines on the light freighter were starting their preburn, blowing dust into the air. The gotal reentered the control room, a little bit of blood running down his shirt.

"They are right outside," he panted. "We need to move."

"Grab them, chuba!" the rodian yelled, trying to get Elex's attention as the human began to open the door that led into the warehouse. "The hostages!"

The gotal untied the Senator while Elex moved to grab Alanna. She pulled her legs inward, preparing to kick out at him again, when he cut her off with a sharp blow to the head with the butt of his blaster.

Dazed, she was unable to struggle as Elex lifted her off the floor and her over to the doorway.

"Me jewz ku, Imperial scum!" the rodian yelled towards the main corridor doorway. He pulled out a handful of small grenades from his pocket and tossed them through the doorway. The explosions shattered the windows in the control room and dislodged some of the ceiling panels, and outside the muffled cries of a couple stormtroopers called out.

"I think he's losing it!" the gotal exclaimed as he pushed Senator Hiron down the narrow durasteel stairway that led from the control room to the warehouse floor.

"Just move," Elex shouted. He struggled down the stairs with Alanna slumped over his shoulder. After reaching the floor they crouched down behind a shipping container. Their boss followed behind, and he ran down the stairs laughing maniacally.

"Where is the exit again?" the gotal shouted. The freighter, on automatic pilot, was lifting off, the sound of its engines reverberating throughout the warehouse, as if they weren't loud enough on their own already.

"Backa kochoo," the rodian yelled, waving towards the wall underneath the control room.

"Basic!" Elex yelled.

They followed him until Alanna came to. She lashed out with her feet, kicking Elex in the back of the head with her knee. He fell forward and dumped her on the ground.

"Bitch!" he yelled. He grabbed her by the shirt and tossed her into a nearby shipping container. She slumped against the durasteel, out of breath, as he levelled his blaster.

Then came the sound of a blaster shot, which impacted just centimeters from Alanna's forehead, followed by the shattering of transparisteel. Elex's body, without his head, fell forward, hitting with a thud at Alanna's feet.

She looked up and realized the paneling along the wall was transparisteel, painted over. Outside she could see another highrise.

"Sniper!" the rodian screamed. The gotal looked around the warehouse, confused. Another shot sounded out, and Alanna realized it was coming from the rooftop of the nearby residential building. The bolt struck the gotal in the chest, separating his left arm from his body. The gotal howled and fired his blasted wildly around the room.

The rodian shot his friend in the back, not willing to take the chance on being shot by accident.

"E chu ta! Karking sleemo wermo wakamancha dopa meekie!" the rodian shouted. He aimed his blaster vaguely towards the rooftop and fired a couple shots, which splashed uselessly against the distant building. The freighter took off, shooting out of the hangar like a bolt out of a blaster.

Things began to quiet down slightly. Senator Hiron was cowering in a corner while Alanna remained against the shipping container.

She was completely amazed at the accuracy of the sniper with the Imperial response team. She knew the rooftop was hundreds of meters away, and whoever it was had fired two perfect shots, one of them through blackened transparisteel.

Alanna heard footsteps from the control room above and crawled around over to the senator as quickly as she could. The rodian ignored her and started prying off a ventilation panel in the wall. He pulled the metallic grating away, allowing it to crash onto the duracrete floor with a loud bang.

"In!" he commanded, pointed his blaster at Alanna. She walked over to him calmly, and then at the last second dashed forward. He fired his blaster but missed wide of her head, barely. Alanna crashed into his body, pressing him up against the wall.

"Get off of me," the rodian screamed. He kicked her with his knee and then shoved his elbow into her back, causing her to cry out in pain and crumple downwards.

Senator Hiron grabbed the rodian from behind, wrapping his forearm around the alien's throat.

The rodian was lean and muscular, while the Senator had experienced exertion once, about ten standard years ago. The terrorist turned his shoulders with all his might, lifting the Senator over his back and sending the middle aged bureaucrat end over end onto the floor.

But Hiron had bought Alanna the time she needed to gather her strength. She wrapped her arms around the rodian's waist and shoved him, as hard as she could, out towards the shipping container and the broken window.

The rodian spun, raised his blaster at Alanna, and then died. The shot struck him in the shoulder, descending through his torso, and then out of his hip. His body crumpled over with a splat, his head nearly torn off of his body.

The was silence for a moment as Alanna got to her feet and looked around at the bodies. All three of them taken out by their sniper friend. The stormtroopers clanged down the stairs and surrounded them, levelling their blasters.

"We're the hostages," Alanna explained, raising her hands in the air. "I'm an Imperial Intelligence operative. That is Senator Hiron, of Devon." She pointed at her companion, who was lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling.

The stormtroopers lowered their weapons but still treated them warily. Outside they could hear another explosion as the diversionary freighter was shot down by a pair of circling T.I.E fighters. Secondary explosions sounded as the debris struck the ground.

Up on the nearby rooftop Cereen stood and took a deep breath. She had only been on the force for a little under a year, and although she had been in more than a few confrontations, she had never killed anybody. Now she had killed three somebodies. Three shots, three dead bodies. She counted her fourth shot, at the speeder, as a kill as well, since it had promptly exploded.

She could her the other squads reporting in. They were getting orders to cordon off the area so that investigation and cleanup teams could be sent in.

"Officer Faye," she heard a more familiar voice in her helmet comlink.

"Chief," she answered.

"Good shooting."

oOoOo

After other teams of security personnel arrived and secured the sight of the operation Cereen and the other two response teams were relieved. On the way back to the annex building her comrades complimented her performance. They wouldn't be underestimating her skills again. Especially since she had single handedly taken out all but one of the terrorists.

The debriefing back at the precinct took several hours, during which she had to recount the events minute by minute to an internal affairs officer. After the debrief Domin met her in the lounge as she was preparing to go back into the communications control center and resume her duties.

"Why don't you the take the rest of the night off," he recommended. "I think extinguishing a terrorist plot is enough for one day, don't you think," he laughed.

She didn't argue. Although she was mentally exhausted, she actually ended up getting home earlier in the morning than when she normally. She fell into bed, not even bothering to take off her clothes.

She woke up in the afternoon to the sound of beeping. It was the computer terminal in her apartment's bedroom, informing her she had a message. It was a couple of hours before her wake up alarm was supposed to go off. Reluctantly she rolled out of bed and stumbled over to the terminal.

"Cereen, this is Domin. We're going to need you to come in early today. 1400 hours, if you can make it. I'll make sure you get credited with overtime."

"Kark," she moaned.

She managed to arrive at the security annex building fifteen minutes beforehand. She got a cup of caf in the lounge before heading to Domin's office.

"Boss," she greeted, knocking on his open door.

"Take a seat," he said absently, typing in something into his computer.

"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked.

"I'm not familiar with this 'sleep' thing? Is it nice?" he said sarcastically.

"So what did you need you need me for? Didn't internal affairs get everything they needed last night?" Cereen asked.

"Yeah, they did. Somebody else was asking for you. Which reminds me," he bent down and picked up his comlink. "Operative, she's in."

A few moments later a woman, who appeared to be five or six years older than Cereen, arrived in the doorway. She walked over to Cereen and held out her hand.

"I wanted to thank you, personally. My name is Operative Alanna, I'm with Imperial Intelligence.

"Oh," Cereen responded. She stood and shook the Alanna's hand.

"I was one of the hostages last night. It's hard to say for sure what would've happened, but I think I can credit you for saving my life."

"Oh, of course," Cereen nodded. "I was just doing my job."

"Well, you did it extraordinarily well. I've never seen shooting like that," Alanna said. "Would you like to go for a walk?"

Cereen glanced at Domin, who nodded his approval.

Alanna led her out of Domin's office and down the hall, towards an exit that led to an open air balcony.

"I've read your file, you are just starting out but you have an excellent service record. Good marks in your sub-adult group as well," Alanna said.

"You've read through all that?" Cereen asked, surprised.

"I can get access to all kinds of things," Alanna said with a smile. "Have you thought much about your future?"

Cereen thought for a moment. She guessed that this Alanna woman would soon be making a suggestion, no matter what her plans were.

"I would like to become a detective eventually, like my father was," Cereen answered.

"I don't think detectives often need to be able fire a rifle as well as you can," Alanna commented. "What about something that would allow you to travel the galaxy? Something would pay a lot more?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"How about becoming a sniper for the Emperor's Imperial Intelligence Agency?"


End file.
